The Iron Ration Part 17

Three years of contact with all cla.s.ses of Germans have yet to show me the single individual, not a most radical socialist, who had anything but kind words for the King-Emperor and his family. What the Kaiser had to say went through the mult.i.tude like an electric impulse. No matter how uninteresting I might find a statement, because I could not see it from the angle of the German, the public always received it very much as it might the word of a prophet. It was conceded that the Emperor could make mistakes, that, indeed, he had made not a few of them; but this did not by any means lessen the degree of receptiveness of his subjects.

Against the word of Kaiser Wilhelm all argument is futile, and will always remain futile.

It was this sentiment which caused the German people to accept with wonderful patience whatever burden the war brought. Had it ever been necessary to cast into the government's war treasury the last pfennig, the mere word from the Kaiser would have accomplished this. What Napoleon was to his soldiers Emperor William II. is to his people.

And then it must not be overlooked that the Emperor possesses marked ability as a press agent. He was always the first to conform to a regulation in food. Long before the rich cla.s.ses had so much as a thought of eating war-bread, Emperor William would tolerate nothing else on his table. The Empress, too, adhered to this. All wheat bread was banished from the several palaces of the imperial _menage_. Every court function was abandoned, save coffee visits in the afternoon for the friends of the Empress.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

CASTLE HOHENZOLLERN

Ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The men and women in the foreground are good types of Germany's peasantry.]

I saw the Emperor a good many times. At the beginning of the war he was rushed past me in the Unter den Linden in Berlin. The crowds were cheering him. He seemed supremely happy, as he bowed to right and left in acknowledgment of the fealty voiced. Since I am not so extraordinarily gifted as some claim to be, I could not say that I saw anything in his face but the expression of a man happy to see that his people stood behind him.

Later I saw him in Vienna. He had come to the capital of his ally to view for the last time the face of his dead comrade-in-arms, the late Emperor Francis Joseph. He stepped out of the railroad carriage with a grave face and hastened toward the young Emperor of Austria to express his condolences. The two men embraced each other. I was struck by the apparent sincerity of the greeting. What impressed me more, perhaps, was the alacrity of the older man. For several minutes the two monarchs paced up and down on the station platform and conversed on some serious subject. I noticed especially the quick movements of the German Emperor's head, and the smart manner in which he faced about when the two had come to the end of the platform.

The streak of white hair, visible between ear and helmet, accentuated in his face that expression which is not rare in old army officers, when the inroads of years have put a damper on youthful martial enthusiasm.

The man was still every inch a soldier, and yet his face reminded me of that of Sir Henry Irving, despite the fact that there is little similarity to be seen when pictures of the two men are compared, as I had shortly afterward opportunity of doing. I should say that in civilian clothing I would take the Emperor for a retired merchant-marine captain, in whose house I would expect to find a fairly good library indiscriminately a.s.sembled and balanced by much bric-a-brac collected in all parts of the world without much plan or design.

Such a retired sea-dog would be a very human being, I take it. His crews might have ever stood in fear of him, but his familiars would look upon him with the respect that is brought any man who knows that friends.h.i.+p's best promoter is usually a judicious degree of reserve.

That was the picture I gained of the Emperor as he marched up and down the station platform in a Vienna suburb. The same afternoon he was taken over the Ring in an automobile. There was no cheering by the vast throng which had a.s.sembled to see the mighty War Lord from the north. The old emperor was dead. The houses were draped in black. Many of the civilians had donned mourning. To the hats that were lifted, Kaiser William bowed with a face that was serious. He was all monarch--King and Emperor.

I can understand why a man of the type of Czar Nicholas should lose his throne in a revolution brought on by the shortage of food and the exploitation incident to war. How a similar fate could overtake a man of the type of William II. is not clear to me. For that he is too ready to act. His adaptiveness is almost proverbial in Germany. I have no doubt that should the impossible really occur in Germany becoming a republic William II. would most likely show up as its first president.

In Germany nothing is really ever popular--the works of poets excluded.

For that reason the Emperor is not popular in the sense in which Edward VII. could be popular. But Emperor William II. is a fact to the German, just as life itself is that. For the time being the Emperor is the state to the vast majority, and, incongruous as it may seem at a time when conditions in Germany are making for equipollence between the reactionary and the progressive, there is no doubt that no throne in Europe is more secure than that of the Hohenzollerns.

To understand that one must have measured in Germany the patience and determination of those who bore the burden of the war as imposed by scant rations on the one hand and ever-increasing expenditures in warfare on the other.

Since King Alfonso of Spain is better known than the German crown-prince, I will refer to him as the ruler whom the latter resembles most. The two men are of about the same build, with the difference in favor of the crown-prince, who is possibly a little taller and slightly better looking in a Teutonic fas.h.i.+on. Both are alike in their unmilitariness. One looks as little the soldier as the other, despite the fact that the interested publics have but rarely the opportunity to see these men in mufti.

After all, that is scant reason for the comparison I have made. The better reason is that both are alike in their att.i.tude toward the public. Alfonso is no more democratic than Frederick, nor would he be more interested in good government.

To my friend Karl H. von Wiegand, most prominent of American correspondents in Berlin, the German crown-prince said on one occasion:

"I regret that not more people will talk to me in the manner you have done. I appreciate frankness, but cannot always get it. The people from whom I expect advice and information make it their business to first find out what I might expect to hear and then talk accordingly. It is very disheartening, but what can I do?"

Those who remember the last act of "_Alt-Heidelberg_" will best understand what the factors are that lead to this. We may pity the mind that looks upon another human being as something infinitely superior because accident suddenly places him in a position of great power. I am not so sure that he who becomes the object of that sort of reverence is not to be pitied more. Our commiseration is especially due the prince whom the frailties of human flesh cause to thus lose all contact with the real life by accepting _ipso facto_ that he is a superior being because others are foolish enough to embrace such a doctrine.

A very interesting story is told in that connection of Emperor Charles of Austria. As heir-apparent he had always been very democratic. In those days he was little more to his brother officers than a comrade, and all of them, acting agreeably to a tradition in the Austro-Hungarian army, addressed him by the familiar _Du_--thou.

After he had become Emperor-King, Charles had occasion to visit the east front, spending some time with the Arz army, at whose headquarters he had stayed often and long while still crown-prince.

The young Emperor detected a chilling reserve among the men with whom he had formerly lived. Some of his comrades addressed him as "Your Majesty." Charles stood this for a while, and then turned on a young officer with whom he had been on very friendly terms.

"I suppose you must say majesty now, but do me the favor of saying '_Du Majestat_.' I am still in the army; or are you trying to rule me out of it?"

This may be considered a fair sample of the cement that has been keeping the Central states from falling apart under the stress of the war. To us republicans that may seem absurd. And still, who would deny that the memory of Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, and Lincoln is not a thing that binds together much of what is Americanism? In the republic the great men of the past are done homage, in the monarchy the important man of the hour is the thing. Were it otherwise the monarchy would not be possible. It is this difference which very often makes the republic seem ungrateful as compared with the monarchy. But in the aggregate in which all men are supposedly equal nothing else can be looked for.

We must look to that condition for an answer to the question which the subject treated here has suggested. And, after all, this is half a dozen of one and six of the other. In the end we expect any aggregate to defend its inst.i.tutions, whether they be republican or monarchical. In the republic the devotion necessary may have its foundation in the desire to preserve liberal inst.i.tutions, while in the monarchy attunement to the great lodestar, tradition, may be the direct cause of patriotism. In England, the ideal monarchy, we have a mixture of both tendencies, and who would say that the mixture, from the British national point of view, has been a bad one?

XII

SHORTAGE SUPREME

A hundred and twelve million people in Central Europe were thinking in terms of shortage as they approached the winter of 1916-17. Government and press said daily that relief would come. The public was advised to be patient another day, another week, another month. All would be well if patience was exercised. That patience was exercised, but in the mind of the populace the shortage a.s.sumed proportions that were at times hard to understand.

The ancestors of Emperor Francis Joseph had been buried in a rather peculiar manner. From the body were taken the brain, heart, and viscera in order to make embalming possible. The heart was then put away in a silver vessel, while the other parts were placed in a copper urn. In the funeral processions these containers were carried in a vehicle following the imperial hea.r.s.e.

The funeral cortege of Francis Joseph was without that vehicle. The old man had requested that he be buried without the dissection that had been necessary in other instances. That being the case, the vehicle was not needed.

But its absence was misinterpreted by the populace. It gave rise to the belief that the copper for the urn could not be spared, seeing that the army needed all of that metal. That little copper would have been required to fas.h.i.+on the urn does not seem to have occurred to them. It was enough to know that the church bells had been melted down and that in the entire country there was not a copper roof left.

The phantom of shortage waxed when it became known that the lack of the necessary chemicals had led to the embalming of the Emperor's body with a fluid which had so discolored the body and face that the coffin had to be closed during the lying-in-state of the dead ruler. It grew again when it became known that, owing to a lack of horses, many changes had to be made in the funeral arrangements, and that most of the pomp of the Spanish court etiquette of funerals would have to be abandoned. What had anciently been a most imposing ceremony became in the end a very quiet affair. With one half of the world at war with the other half, there was a dearth even in monarchs, n.o.bility, and diplomatists to attend the funeral.

Somehow I gained the impression that the word "Want" was written even on the plain coffin which they lifted upon the catafalque in St. Stefan's Cathedral in Vienna, twenty feet away from me. To get into the church I had pa.s.sed through a throng that showed want and deprivation in clothing and mien. It was a chilly day. Through the narrow streets leading to the small square in which the cathedral stands a raw wind was blowing, and I remember well how the one bright spot in that dreary picture was the tall spire of the cathedral upon which fell the light of the setting winter sun. The narrow streets and little square lay in the gloom that fitted the occasion. The shadow of death seemed to have fallen on everything--upon all except the large white cross which presently moved up the central aisle. Under the pall which the cross divided into four black fields lay the remains of the unhappiest of men. His last days had been made bitter by his people's cry for bread.

Since coal was scarce, the church had not been heated. But that night, as if in honor of the funeral guests, a few more lights burned on the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares of Vienna. Even that was reckless extravagance under the circ.u.mstances.

Hundreds of thousands of women and children were sitting in cold rooms at that time. The coal-lines brought usually disappointment, but no fuel. Even the hospitals to which many of these unfortunates had to be taken found it difficult to get what coal they needed. The street-car service had been curtailed to such an extent that many were unable to reach their place of work. In Austria that was especially the fault of the Sturgkh regime, whose mad career in burning the candle at both ends the dead emperor had failed to check.

To keep certain neighbors good-natured and get from them such foods as they could spare, the Central states of Europe had in 1916 exported roughly three million two hundred thousands tons of coal. Another million tons had been s.h.i.+pped into the territories occupied by the Centralist troops. This was no great coal business, of course, especially when we come to consider that some of this fuel came from Belgium. But the four million tons could have been used at home without a lump going begging. When Christmas came coal was as scarce in Germany, Austria, and Hungary as was food. And that is saying a great deal.

Much economy had been already practised during the summer. "Summer time"

meant the saving each day of one hour's consumption of fuel in city traction and lighting street, house, and shop. The saving was not great, when compared with the fuel a population of roundly one hundred and twelve millions will consume when given a free hand. But it was something, anyway.

That something was an eas.e.m.e.nt of conditions in the coal market during the summer months. It did not make available for the cold season so much as a shovelful of coal. Whatever the mines put out was carted off there and then. When winter came the bunkers were empty.

The prospect of having to bear with an ever-craving stomach the discomforts of the cold and poorly lighted rooms was not pleasant.

The government saw this and tried a little belated regulation.

I say belated regulation because the measures came too late to have much value. That there would be a shortage in coal had been foreseen. Nothing could be done, however, to ward off the _Knappheit_.

Among my many acquaintances is the owner of several coal-mines in Austrian Silesia. His handicaps were typical of what every mine-operator had to contend with.

"The coal is there, of course," he would say. "But how am I to get it out? My best miners are at the front. Coal-mining may be done only by men who are physically the fittest. That is the very cla.s.s of man the government needs at the front. I am trying to come somewhere near my normal output with men that are long past the age when they can produce what is expected of the average miner.

"It can't be done, of course.

"Women are no good underground. So I have tried Russian prisoners-of-war. I went to a prison camp and picked out seventy-five of the most likely chaps. I made willingness to work in a mine one of the conditions of their furlough. They all were willing--so long as they did not know what the work was. Right there the willingness of half the crew ended. I sent them back and tried my luck with the rest.

"To get some work out of the men, I made arrangements with the government that I was to pay them four-fifths of the regular scale. It isn't a question of money. It's a question of getting at the coal. To make a long story short: Out of the seventy-five Russians seventeen have qualified. I can't afford to repeat the experiment, for the reason that apprentices litter up the works and interfere with the few miners I have left."